Shalom

I have longed for thy salvation, O L-RD; and thy Torah is my delight. Let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; and let thy judgments help me. I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments. Psalm 119:174-176

03 December 2013

Complaints from parents of the controversial sect "twelve tribes" against the provisional withdrawal of custody has mostly been rejected the Nuremberg Higher Regional Court (OLG). [Source]

...[The Twelve Tribes] lodged complaints before the Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg. As the Court announced on Monday, the judges dismissed the appeal now for seven of nine children. Only the two youngest children come back into the custody of their parents. [Source]

Two toddlers, a 17-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy have been officially allowed to live with their parents... since Monday. The Higher Regional Court of Nuremberg and the district court Nördlingen have lifted the temporary withdrawal of parental custody in these four cases. [Source]

According to the Higher Regional Court ... "for the seven older children, the current risk of corporal punishment" persists. ... Therefore, the seven older children remain with foster parents... [Source]

...The children should therefore initially remain with the foster parents, but may in regular contact with their biological parents... [Source]

... the Senate saw no sufficient evidence that even the youngest children who are only a few months old to be threatened by physical punishment after several hearings. Only an actual threat to the child's welfare could justify action under the provisional legal protection measures. In that regard, the Senate picked up the official court decision. The two babies are returned to the custody of their parents... [Source]

...so far, the preliminary hearings have only given partial withdrawal of parental authority for the children as confirmed with individual cases. A final decision is pending the so-called main proceedings, which will take several months. [Source] see this also

In other news, two boys ran away from their foster parents and reappeared on sect grounds with their parents this week. The eldest was allowed to remain with his family after they agreed to send him to public school and he will not be beaten any longer.

The
elder may remain in Klosterzimmern after a judgment of Nördlinger
District Court with his parents knew at the time of escape but nothing
about it. [Source]

The 13-year-old will be returned to the home. That done, probably later today. [Source]

The father of the boy had stated that his child is doing well, but he would not say where he is staying. The 13-year-old should decide where he wanted to live. [Source]

Honestly, for me, this is a terrible turn of events. Parents who believe that their children will be purged of sin and their souls saved from hell by regular beatings; especially those who believe children as young as a couple days old should be whipped -- will continue beating their children until they learn a better way.

Update: 4.12.2013 The thirteen-year-old child is still missing.

Six police officers and three employees of the youth office searched on the site of the sect in Klosterzimmern unsuccessful after him. ...the search has been amplified according to Beck. [Source]

The boy's whereabouts are unknown to the authorities. Therefore, the search has been intensified as they continue to work to return the boy [to the foster home]. [Source]

01 December 2013

Lev Tahor or Lev Tohor [Website] is a fringe movement from within ultra-orthodox Judaism and is headed by Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans (also known as Rabbi Erez Shlomo Elbarnes, Erez Albaranes, Shlomo Helbran, and Rabbi Shlomo Halbernetz) and his son Nachman. The Rabbi is now estranged from his wife and one of his sons, who are now in Israel.

Information below in the various news articles and blogs will detail information linking Rabbi Helbrans to the group “Hisachdus Hayereim”, [Union of the God-Fearing], and others.

Lev Tahor are known in Canada and Israel for homeschooling their children; their women and girls holding to very strict (even to Orthodox Jewish ideals) modesty standards that include wearing a similar clothing standard to a burqa or niqab, and a few run-ins with the law between the 1980s and 1990s. Lev Tahor is again in the news due to some child welfare and homeschooling concerns that the state of Quebec has with the group.

Brief History of the group, to be given in detail in the articles below:

The name “Lev Tahor” could be translated clean or pure heart, which references a passage from Psalm 51:10, and began in Jerusalem in the 1980s. Shlomo and Malka Helbrans lived in Safed, Israel, for six years as Baalei Teshuva. In the mid-1980s, though he had not been given Smicha, he opened a yeshiva (Braslav Yeshivat Hametivta) in Jerusalem after relocating his family there.

About
a third of the sect members are baalei teshuva (Individuals raised as non-religious who later became religious.), another third come from other
Hasidic groups, and the final third are people who have been raised in
the movement. In the last thirty years, members have followed the Helbrans family from Israel to the United States and Canada.

The movement relocated to Williamsburg and later to Monsey [in New York] in the 1990s. Sometime between 1991 and 1993, a student was put under Rabbi Helbrans’ wing to study for his Bar Mitzvah. The child went missing and his mother involved the police in the search for him. The child’s mother was not religious and was separated from her abusive husband who is now in Israel. He returned to the United States to search for his son and the rabbi attempted to extort large sums of money from the family to return the child to their care.

Once the son was returned, he appeared in court and later ran away again, News reports had been made of his random appearances in various places around the world. Some reports say that he is no longer religious..

After a 10-month investigation by state and federal authorities, Rabbi Schlomo Helbrans, whose yeshiva Shai had attended, was indicted recently on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy, along with his wife, Malka, and one of his followers, Mordechai Weisz. The case is expected to go to trial sometime this fall or winter.. [Source]

Hearing that Shai refused to attend school, Weisz proposed that the boy spend Sabbaths with him, promising Hana that he wouldn't let Helbrans get near the boy. Hana consented, and for a few weeks that arrangement seemed to work. Shai went back to public school and seemed to be returning to normal. [Source]

Tobias Freund, 36, the man convicted Wednesday, had told the grand jury that he was not involved in the boy's disappearance, but prosecutors said he drove the boy out of the city. The boy has not been found. A jury convicted Mr. Freund of three counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice, for altering his phone records.[Source]

Rabbi Helbrans offered the plea of guilty to a charge of conspiracy to kidnap in the fourth degree in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn. The plea was part of an intricate arrangement with the Brooklyn District Attorney that will give the rabbi a sentence of five years' probation and 250 hours of community service… Charges were dropped for… Malka.. [Source]

A Jewish teen-ager reunited with his parents after he disappeared for two years in a struggle over his religious training will be separated from them again, a judge ruled here today. [Source]

... Justice Thaddeus E. Owens rejected a plea deal granting probation to the accused rabbi -- a deal the judge had already accepted last month -- after hearing yesterday from the boy, his divorced parents, the rabbi and some of the lawyers in the case in an hourlong session in a packed courtroom.[Source]

The youth has said he willingly chose to live a secret life from early 1992 until late this February with various Orthodox families in Rockland County. His parents and lawyers contend now that he has been brainwashed and needs psychiatric care. [Source]

A Hasidic rabbi yesterday withdrew his guilty plea to a lesser charge and will stand trial on charges of kidnapping a Jewish teen-ager from his parents. [Source]

Shai Fhima, who has been at the center of a long custody battle after he disappeared with a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn, has disappeared again, his mother says. [Source]

Shlomo Helbrans, responded that Shai had voluntarily run away from a home in which he had been physically abused, and Shai made the same contention after he reappeared. The teen-ager also vowed that if forced to return to his parents, he would flee -- a promise on which he has since made good. [Source]

Shlomo Helbrans, said " 'If you don't want your son to be religious I have the right to take him away from you' " and after one of the rabbi's followers "held my arm and twisted my arm."She acknowledged that her son, who is now 15, wanted to stay at the Borough Park yeshiva rather than go home with her to Ramsey, N.J., but she suggested that he had been brainwashed. [Source]

The defense lawyers told the jury that Shai had voluntarily run away from a dysfunctional family in which his stepfather beat his mother and him, sending them to a shelter for battered women. They held that the rabbi and his wife had given the boy sanctuary and had not criminally abetted his disappearance.[Source]

Mr. Reuven, a 35-year-old Israeli citizen... learned from an Israeli newspaper article in late April 1992 that his son had allegedly been kidnapped on April 5, 1992. He said he then had a series of conversations with Rabbi Helbrans by telephone from Israel, while preparing to travel to New York to find his son. [Source]

With Mr. Reuven on the witness stand, a prosecutor, Michael Vecchione, read an excerpt from the transcript in which Rabbi Helbrans is quoted as having said to Mr. Reuven, "The amount that I committing (sic) myself to is in the neighborhood of $10,000. More than that I would not be able to." [Source]

The leader of a small ultra-Orthodox Hasidic group, 32-year-old Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, was found guilty of abducting Shai Fhima Reuven, who was 13 when he disappeared in 1992. Helbrans' wife, Malka, 33, was found guilty of conspiracy. [Source]

In suburban Rockland County, Shai's mother is fighting for custody of him with Rabbi Aryeh Zaks. Pending a decision, Zaks has custody and Shai's mother can see him once a week. [Source]

In a courtroom rife with rancorous passion, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi was sentenced yesterday to 4 to 12 years in prison for kidnapping a Jewish teen-ager who disappeared from his family for two years. [Source]

"This kidnap is not over for me," the mother, Hana Fhima, said in a packed Brooklyn courtroom, referring to a battle she has been waging with another rabbi for custody of her son, Shai Fhima Reuven, since he resurfaced last February in Rockland County. The youth, now 15, was 13 when he vanished in 1992 after Mrs. Fhima sent him for bar mitzvah instruction to a yeshiva Rabbi Helbrans then ran in Brooklyn. [Source]

Tai Ellin-Byrd, one of the dozen jurors who convicted Helbrans of kidnapping ... said that “this sentence is morally appropriate.” The jury, which deliberated for just five hours following the five-week trial in New York State Supreme Court, was “pretty much unanimous” about Helbrans’ [guilt] as soon as they walked into the deliberation room. [Source]

Mr. Weisz was originally charged with kidnapping, but the case was severed from the charges against Rabbi Helbrans. Malka Helbrans, 33, who was tried along with her husband, was acquitted of the kidnapping charge but convicted of criminal conspiracy. [Source]

"I feel the evidence was legally insufficient," Justice Thaddeus E. Owens of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn said in dismissing the wife's conviction. On Nov. 9, a jury had convicted the woman, Malka Helbrans, of conspiring to kidnap the teen-ager, Shai Fhima Reuven. [Source]

For the first time, New York State accepted a computer-generated image of what an inmate, in this case, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, would look like without a beard instead of making him shave for a conventional photograph. [Source]

During the court case, it was uncovered that the Rabbi moved to the United States illegally. By 1994, Rabbi Helbrans was convicted of kidnapping a minor child. His wife and a member of the sect were given lighter sentences. A book was written about the case and entitled “The Zaddik: The Battle for a Boy’s Soul”, which was published in 2001.

There are some allegations that Rabbi Helbrans was given preferential treatment during court proceedings and his later incarceration. He did not complete his lengthy jail sentence.

The federal probe also focuses on whether the Pataki administration gave preferential treatment to Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, who in a notorious case in 1994, was convicted of kidnapping teenager Shai Fhima Reuven from his mother. Wiesenfeld, a former aide to Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) and a former FBI agent, declined to comment about the grand jury. [Source]

The federal government is also focusing on a similar but separate case involving possible lenient treatment given by parole officials to Shlomo Helbrans, a Hasidic rabbi imprisoned in a widely publicized kidnapping case. Rabbi Helbrans was deported to Israel in May, his lawyer has said, but federal officials say their investigation is continuing. [Source]

An influential Pataki fund-raiser also intervened in the case of Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, seeking an early release hearing, according to the papers and sources.[Source]

State records show that prison officials moved the rabbi, Shlomo Helbrans, from prison into a work-release program even though he was ineligible for the transfer because Federal immigration officials wanted to deport him. The transfer in June 1996 was rescinded after a Federal prosecutor who had brought charges against Rabbi Helbrans protested to state prison officials. [Source]

After being awarded parole, Rabbi Helbrans was investigated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and deported to Israel in 1996.

Rabbi Helbrans, 38, an Israeli citizen, was arrested Wednesday night by agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the police station in Spring Valley, N.Y. … an.. was was put on a plane for Israel at 5:25 p.m., his lawyer, Ronald G. Russo, said. [Source]

Immigration officials on May 11 deported Helbrans, 38, on two grounds: that he entered the United States illegally and that convicted felons can be deported.[Source]

The rabbi was found guilty of kidnapping, jailed for two years and deported to Israel -- despite testimony from Shai, who had resurfaced after two years in places like a yeshiva in France, that he had voluntarily run away after the Helbrans family showed him ''what a normal family was.'' [Source]

Sometime after this, Rabbi Helbrans was linked to the Marii Zambron murder case in New York in 2000. [Source]
and the Lev Tahor movement relocated to Canada [in 2000] while the
rabbi was on a on a temporary visa. Families of the sect began joining
him soon after. While this is not unusual for most of Orthodox Judaism,
it is what was uncovered after this in Canada and Israel that is
pertinent to the current case in Canada.

Vaad
Hoaskonim, a New York-based rabbinical council with members in
Williamsburg, Boro Park, Monsey and Queens, ruled that Elbarnes’s
movement is “a great threat, spiritual and physical, to the
Torah-observant community.” The council forbade members of their
communities to associate with Elbarnes and urged his followers to leave
him. [Source]

Canada’s
Immigration and Refugee Board, an independent tribunal, accepted
Elbarnes’s claim that he would be in danger if deported to Israel, and
so it granted him refugee status. This month, however, the Federal Court
of Canada granted leave to the federal government to appeal the
tribunal’s ruling. The appeal is to be heard October 5, probably in
Montreal. [Source]

Those
speaking up for him included well-known Montreal human rights lawyer
Julius Grey and anti-Zionist history professor Yakov Rabkin. [Source]

Elbarnes
advocates the end of Israel as an independent country and turning the
land over to the Arabs, he would likely not enjoy protection by the
Israeli government because his ideas could be viewed as dangerous. [Source]

Elbarnes,
42, was granted refugee status by IRB judge Gilles Ethier, who based
his decision on documents, written testimony and the oral testimony of
eight witnesses, including Elbarnes’ mother, described as secular, and
the abducted boy, now an adult. [Source]

Shlomo
Helbrans-Satmar style Rebbe and head of polygamist cult (Lev Tahor)
based in Quebec . He is accused of marrying off his underage daughter to
a man in his 30's and arranging similar such marriages among members of
his cult. He was also involved in the notorious Shai Fhima abduction
case, it is also interesting to note Fhima's own allegations that he was
sexually molested while living among the cult. [Source]

Rabbi
Shlomo Helbran and his wife Malka and Mordechai Weisz,were originally
accused of physical abuse and kidnapping of a 13-year-old boy. The
rabbi was also accused of having cult like practices. Rabbi Helbran was
convicted in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn in 1994 of kidnapping a
young boy. At the time Helbran headed a small group described as an
offshoot of the Satmar movement of the Hasidic Jews. [Source]

In
2004, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada linked Neturei Karta
and Lev Tahor together and sought to better understand these
communities.

In 2008, Lev Tahor were among the protesters during the Israel Day celebrations in Montreal

.

The
major addition to this year’s Jewish protest at the Israel Day
commemoration was the 35 Lev Tahor Chasidic community members from
Ste-Agathe, north of Montréal with Rabbi Elbrans. [source]

One
incident about Lev Tahor that came to limelight in 2011, concerned
underage girls being sent from Israel to marry within the community in
Canada.

The
girls, aged 15 and 13, were forcibly detained by Canadian immigration
officials in Montreal and returned to Israel apparently under order of
an Israeli court. The girls’ great-uncle had petitioned for the writ out
of concern that the girls would be harmed by the group in Canada, that
their property would be taken, and that they could be forced to wed male
members of the Lev Tahor sect. [Source]

The
parents of the girls decided the community in Canada would be suitable
and sent them from Beit Shemesh to N. America, hoping to have them there
in the Lev Tahor village in time for Rosh Hashanah. The family members
who petitioned the court feared that in the cult’s community, the Lev
Tahor village, they would be compelled to get married in line with the
groups hashkofa towards keeping them pure. [Source]

The
episode has raised questions about the legitimacy of Lev Tahor, and an
Israeli court will rule next week on whether membership of the sect
should be made illegal for all Israelis. If this happens, one
implication is that social welfare agencies will be empowered to take
away member parents' children. [Source]

The
girls in the midst of the firestorm, ages 13 and 15, are the daughters
of two secular Israelis who became ultra-Orthodox and joined the sect.
Their grandmother and great-uncle, concerned for the girls’ well-being,
petitioned the court after the girls’ parents put them on a plane headed
to Canada, to an isolated village outside Montreal that comprises 45
families from Lev Tahor. [Source]

The
spiritual leader of Lev Tahor in Canada, Rabbi Shlomo Elbarnes, denied
using coercion. "Use force? We want everybody who is not 100 percent
happy … to leave us," Elbarnes told the Globe and Mail. [Source]

Bringing
the Beit Shemesh sisters back to Israel was an international operation,
involving the foreign ministry and Interpol. The goal of the operation
was to stop the pair from entering the ultra-Orthodox community in
Canada. [Source]

It was after this incident that the Israeli government began renewed
investigations into the sect over alleged kidnappings and other child
welfare issues. Some of the parents in the sect were given injunctions
to prohibit them leaving the country or sending their children to Canada
as investigations were underway

...an
Israeli court is expected to decide next week whether it is legal to
belong to the extreme ultra-Orthodox group Lev Tahor, known as "the
Taliban sect." A decision reached this week by a family court in Rishon
Letzion indicates that a ruling on Lev Tahor's legality is imminent. [Source]

In 2012, Rabbi Helbrans was again in the news in New York, discussing his 1990s kidnapping case.

Also
in 2012, Israeli newspapers, Haaretz Daily and Israel HaYom, began
investigating the sect and published exposés on Lev Tahor, its leaders,
practice, strict kosher rules and the welfare of its members. Israel
HaYom discussed the origins of the sect, various run-ins with the law
and other accusations and concerns, whereas Haaretz Daily embedded a
reporte in the culture and report on what he saw and heard. The blog,
“Shearim”, discusses the exposés from an Orthodox perspective. Israeli
Channel 10 also investigated Lev Tahor after several allegations about
the sect had been made and much concern was expressed by individuals who
have family members in the sect.

Haaretz
spent five days with the controversial 'Lev Tahor' Haredi community in
Canada to uncover the truth about the sect and its charismatic head,
Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans. Part one of a two-part series. [Source]

In
the second part of Haaretz’s investigation into the Lev Tahor Hasidic
cult in Canada, Shay Fogelman speaks to the group’s leader, Rabbi Shlomo
Helbrans, about his prison time in America and the community’s attitude
to underage marriage, to a young man who managed to leave the religious
extremists and to a mother who defend their hard-line way of life. [Source]

The
very existence of the radical community, aloof and controversial is not
new: since the early 90s been linked to various cases, including those
who came to the Israeli police, the FBI and courts in Israel and the
United States [Source]

"In
general, there were a lot of threats and penalties. There was an
atmosphere of abstract fear. When my sister talked to a step-brother, a
son of our mother's new husband, my Rebbe punished her with the
prohibition to leave the house for several days. . ." [Source]

Helbrans
who is, according to Israel Hayom without any SMICHA from the Israeli
Rabbanut (Chief Rabbinate) wrote his own books and this is what he is
teaching his followers. Still in Jerusalem, he studied with the Toldot
Aharon for a while and afterwards in Satmar but insisted on founding his
own group.[Source]

'Lev
Tahor' congregation, a radical sect located in Canada, was reviewed
last night (Wednesday) extensively in 'True side' a broadcast program by
Amnon Levi on Channel 10 [Source]

Channel 10 accompanied Aryeh Leber, a cult refugee, who is operating a search campaign for his mother [Source] - Videos in Hebrew

Shay Fogelman put up an exposé on Rabbi Helbrans in two parts at T.O.T. Private Consulting Services blog. Part one and part two are quite lengthy on the history and practices of the sect.

Shortly
after, Jewish paper Vos iz Neias, The Jewish Voice and Behadrey Haredim
also carried stories on the sect in the fall of 2012.The articles
discuss the Channel 10 exposé, among other information. Due to the time
limits of the show, not everything was able to be covered, so Behadrey
Haredim did their best to share everything else that they felt was
pertinent to the case by interviewing a current member about the
accusations made about Lev Tahor.

A
group of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Quebec have attracted media attention –
and some serious concern – with reports of extremist religious behavior
and communal coercion that go way beyond the standard behavior of even
their most devout co-religionists. [Source]

Some
of the members of Lev Tahor were involved in trying to illegally leave
Israel with their children to join the sect in Canada in the summer of
2013 after court injunctions that halted their movement out of the
country. They were caught in Jordan by Jordanian police and later
returned to Israel for trial. This was the same family implicated in the
2011 incidence involving Canadian immigration returning two underage
girls to Israel after the holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

The
ultra-Orthodox Jewish family, consisting of parents and six children,
crossed the border with Jordan, on Wednesday night and was arrested by
the Jordanian authorities. [Source]

Parents
of six children trapped in Jordan when they tried to join the Lev Tahor
cult were brought before a judge, and refused to be represented by
attorney [Source]

This family, along with many of the members of Lev Tahor are balei teshuva, which is to say newly orthodox. They previouslyhit the headlinesin
2011 in Israel when they attempted to send two of their daughters, then
aged 13 and 15, to Canada, only to have them forcefully returned to
Israel by the Canadian authorities. [Source]

According
to Channel 10, initial questioning revealed that — contrary to early
speculation that they had accidentally wandered into the neighboring
country while hiking — the family had intentionally entered Jordan in an
attempt to circumvent a court order, sought by the father’s family,
forbidding them to leave Israel. [Source]

Orit
Cohen, sister of the father who was arrested in Jordan in an exclusive
interview to B'Chadrei Charedim • "My brother was caught into the cult
"Lev Tahor" • "the haredi public must condemn the cult and leader Shlomo
Halbernetz [Source]

The
Beit Shemesh family that tried to join him is led by parents who were
not raised in the religious Jewish community, but became religious in
adulthood. They joined the hareidi-religious community in Beit Shemesh
and began raising six children there. [Source]

In
Spring of 2013, The Rabbi’s wife, Malka Helbranz was apparently ejected
from the community. She has since returned to Israel. There isn’t much
news coverage on this issue in English at this time.

Malka
Halbernetz is not the only one who abandoned the sect. So far there
were several cases of families or family members, after receiving
assistance from external sources left the cult. The Center for Victims
of Cults was established seven years ago and so far has handled over 10
center cases of families and individuals who abandoned Lev Tahor. [Source]

"She
is staying at the home of one of the women in her family in the north
of the country," says a source involved in the details of her escape.
The source added that the community in Canada are pleased and happy that
she left, "They never liked the fact that the leader's wife denies any
of their methods." [Source]

The
trouble for the rabbi's wife began after she voiced opposition to the
rampant child abuse going on in the community. “The main reason for my
sufferings is the fact that I dared to voice opposition to the
punishments that are being used in the village,” Malka said. [Source]

I
also found that one of the Rabbi’s sons has also since returned to
Israel, and has been ostracised from the group. He is, however, still
active in the religious community.

A
son of the group’s leader fled the group and moved back to Israel.
According to Nachman Helbrans, this brother was in a bitter custody
battle with his ex-wife, left for Israel, and then claimed his children
were being neglected. Several children from that family were removed and
sent to live in Israel with the father. [Source]

On
Shabbos afternoon, about 50 protesters came to the corner of Devora
Haneviah Street in the capital, where - as every week – they protested
against the desecration of Shabbos in the city. At about 16:30 a garbage
truck passed by that came to clear the garbage can which is situated
nearby. The wrath of the protesters skyrocketed. Halbernetz's son, who
was among the group of protesters, lay on the road behind the truck to
block it and stop the continued activity on Shabbos. [Source]

Sometime
in 2013, investigations began in Quebec on the Rebbe’s son Nachman and
the Lev Tahor community. There were concerns about the children’s
education and welfare, match-making efforts and young ages of girls
given in marriage; as well as allegations of abuse and mind control.

Later
on, investigations into the conditions in the Lev Tahor community had
been found that the children were not being instructed in English and
French, but rather in Hebrew and Yiddish and would be unable to call for
assistance should anything happen to their parents or another member of
the sect in an emergency. It was also found that the girls were not
getting the same standard of education as the boys, and that the
children were unable to do basic mathematics.

Due
to the investigation in Quebec, after discussing the issue with a few
homeschool advocacy groups, including the HSLDA; the Rebbe and his son
moved the community to a town in Ontario, which then involved both
Quebec and Ontario’s Child Welfare Services and court systems. From what
I understand, Canada is also trying to get information on the group
from the United States and Israel.

About
40 ultra-Orthodox Jewish families living in the Laurentians, in the
closed community of Lev Tahor, disappeared this week without warning —
leaving youth protection officials in Quebec worried about the safety of
120 children.[Source]

About
40 families belonging to the cult, tried yesterday (Tuesday) to flee
the country, having realized that the welfare authorities intend to
intervene in raising their children. [Source]

Under
the Monday morning moonlight, at about 1 a.m., 40 families numbering
nearly 200 people boarded a convoy of buses to flee their homes and what
they considered the imminent threat of Quebec’s child protection
authorities.[Source]

“Youth
protection services reiterates its will to collaborate, in any way, to
assure the safety and well-being of the children in the community,” said
a written statement issued by Quebec’s youth protection department
Monday evening.[Source]

A hearing has been scheduled at the St. Jérôme courthouse Wednesday. [Source]

"The
reason for departure of the community," explains its people in the
notice, "decrees on education in Quebec. Other communities in Quebec and
abroad (eg Antwerp) are struggling against the decrees in court, but
the situation with Lev Tahor, because it is a small community is much
more serious." [Source]

Israeli
media have previously reported that the ultra-orthodox Lev Tahor group
engages in forced marriages. Child protection services north of Montreal
had issued a summons for Lev Tahor members to appear before youth court
on Thursday on allegations of child abuse. [Source]

Chatham-Kent
Children’s Services says the group will not get any special treatment.
“If there are issues to be followed up on we would conduct our business
the same way we would with any other situation that presented itself to a
child protection agency,” says Interim Executive Director Stephen Doig.
[Source]

“The
nature of this community is to go back to the old traditions," he said.
“Freedom of religion is important to us. This is something that in
Ontario that is much more respected." Jewish human rights organization
B’nai Brith Canada expressed its concern for the children living in the
Lev Tahor community. [Source]

Authorities
in Ontario say they are aware of the group’s presence in the region.
The local police force in the Chatham-Kent area has given a similar
statement [Source]

Nachman Helbrans,
a member of the Jewish fundamentalist group, Lev Tahor, talks about the
groups move from Quebec to Ontario amid a child neglect investigation,
while at a motel in Windsor Ont., where they are temporarily staying.
Nachman is heard saying that the Homeschool Legal Defense Association and other homeschooling associations suggested they leave Quebec. [Video Source]

"They
force us to learn things that are against our religion, such as
evolution," Goldman said, adding that he believes the authorities
planned to take the children and place them in a foster home. [Source]

“The
education system in Quebec does not comply with our views because in
Quebec it says each child should receive equivalent education,
otherwise, they will call youth protection services,” said Helbrans. “We
cannot just accept the curriculum, including evolution and many other
issues we cannot teach our children.” [Source]

Uriel Goldman, spokesperson for the fundamentalist Jewish group Lev Tahor speaks in in Chatham, Ontario on November 28, 2013. [Video Source]

Despite
being a convicted felon, he was granted refugee status in 2004, after
he claimed to be in danger if he was sent back to Israel because of his
extreme anti-Zionist views. [Source]

Ontario reportedly has liberal requirements for faith-based home schooling. [Source]

Nachman
Helbrans, a spokesman for the sect, has said they want to educate their
children according to their own religious beliefs and fled to Ontario
to avoid Quebec’s education system, which “doesn’t give freedom of
religion as most people understand it.”[Source]

"We've
received complaints from former members of the sect, about abuse
allegations, which we referred to (Youth Protection Services) in the
Laurentians," Ouellette said. [Source]

“For
sure we are worried by the fact that they fled Quebec to go to
Ontario,” Denis Baraby, director of youth protection for the Laurentians
region, said Friday. His workers have been actively involved in the
community since August, trying to help children suffering from poor
hygiene, inadequate housing and unsatisfactory schooling. [Source]

"There
were health issues, hygiene issues, the houses were dirty with garbage
everywhere," Baraby said in an interview. Education was another issue,
Baraby said. The children were home schooled and "not even capable of
doing basic math." [Source]

In
a radio interview with Radio-Canada on Tuesday, Quebec Education
Minister Marie Malavoy called the situation “sensitive” and one that
must be taken seriously. The Education Department had negotiated with
the community over the children’s schooling, which is largely religious
teaching in an environment without proper permits.[Source]

According
to Canadian media, one of the charges against the families was that
their children – who are homeschooled - did not know basic math, and in
several cases, could not speak either English or French. [Source]

He
said boys learn the basic Quebec curriculum, including history and
math, but most of it is in Yiddish. He said the group has even taken the
necessary steps to translate textbooks into Yiddish. Girls are taught
basic home economic skills, like sewing and cooking. [Source]

“The
schooling matter is one issue but not the only. There were important
shortcomings, serious negligence,” said Denis Baraby, director of Centre
jeunesse des Laurentides. “Their children, even at age 10 or 12,
wouldn’t be even be able in an emergency to ask for help.” [Source]

He
said his group recently spent thousands of dollars on textbooks for
such things as math and history. He said most adults in his group speak
English or French, though he acknowledges that the children speak only
Yiddish or Hebrew. He said the Quebec government demanded that Lev Tahor
teach things members disagree with, such as evolution and
homosexuality. [Source]

Quebec
youth protection services told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that
there are concerns that the children were neglected. The children
reportedly were forced to live in the homes of families other than their
own for punishments. [Source]

A
youth court judge in Quebec has ordered that 14 children from the
ultra-orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor be placed temporarily in foster
care, undergo medical exams and receive psychological support.The order
also compels the children's parents to turn over their passports. [Source]

Quebec
Judge Pierre Hamel said in his ruling that he believed the children
were at "serious risk of harm" after hearing testimony from three
child-protection workers as well as a former member of the sect, who
related what he endured while living in the community and how he
ultimately fled the group.[Source]

A
number of the children are at or near the age of 13, which Shlomo
Helbrans has said is the ideal age for marriage under his interpretation
of Jewish law. The eldest of the children targeted by the court order—a
married 16-year-old — is the mother of the infant child that has been
ordered into foster care.[Source]

Two
families from an extremist haredi Orthodox sect will comply with a
court’s order to return to Quebec for a hearing on allegations of child
neglect, a sect leader said. Nachman Helbrans, son of the community’s
leader, Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans, said the families will meet with child
protection officials on Wednesday, the Toronto Star reported Monday. [Source]

Judge
Pierre Hamel issued the ruling Wednesday night, ordering the children
be removed from the community and placed in foster homes immediately,
for at least 30 days. [Source]

The emergency order Wednesdayfrom
Quebec Youth Court Judge Pierre Hamel said the children should be
placed in foster care for 30 days and receive medical and psychological
evaluations. They are to have no contact with Shlomo Helbrans, or other
Lev Tahor members, and contact with the families is to be tightly
controlled by child protection investigators in Quebec. [Source]

Yoil
Weingarten, a member of the ultra-orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor,
defends his community and accuses Israel of being behind the persecution
of his community. [Video included at Source]

Oded
Twik has urged the Canadian authorities to remove all 137 children from
the community. Dozens of family members and supporters attended a
demonstration outside the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv on October 14.
Many family members have not communicated with their relatives for eight
years. [Source]

Due
to the investigations in Canada, Israel has ramped up their efforts in
hearing more information about the sect and deciding what to do, in a
spirit of cooperation with American and Canadian authorities. Special
hearings are now underway in the Knesset. [Israeli Parliament]

Hitting
children with iron bars, denial of food, taking psychiatric pills by
coercion and total disconnection from the family in Israel. These are
some of the testimonies heard today (Tuesday) by the Committee in the
Knesset, about the Israeli families at the 'Lev Tahor' community in
Canada. [Source]

On
Tuesday the Knesset’s Committee on the Rights of the Child held a
hearing on Lev Tahor, and families of the cult members as well as MKs
slammed the State Prosecutor’s Office for dragging its feet on the case.
[Source]

In
the meeting representatives of the Ministry of Internal Security, the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Justice Ministry, the Welfare Ministry,
the ”Lev Ahim” Organization, INTERPOL, the National Council for the
Child and the victims of the cult will be present. [Source]

Hitting
children with iron bars, denial of food, taking psychiatric pills by
coercion and total disconnection from the family in Israel. These are
some of the testimonies heard today (Tuesday) by the Committee in the
Knesset, about the Israeli families at the 'Lev Tahor' community in
Canada. It was also told about achieving compliance by constant pain
such as wearing shoes smaller than one's shoe size, forced divorce and
marriage.. [Source]

UPDATE: December 3, 2013

A Quebec judge ordered the immediate removal of 14 children from the Lev Tahor Jewish sect and their placement in foster care for at least 30 days. [Source]

Rosner has repeatedly stated they moved here because they object to Quebec's education system, which makes following the province's curriculum compulsory. The group doesn't agree with components such as sex education and the teaching of evolution. [Source]

Lev Tahor community member Uriel Goldman said that if an Ontario judge certifies the Quebec court order, 'we're going to obey that," Goldman told CJAD 800 News, adding they wouldn't be happy about it. [Source]

UPDATE: January 3, 2013

Social workers
familiar with the community discuss administration of melatonin to calm
the children, fungus resulting from women being forced to wear socks or
stockings at all times, and a hectic bus trip from Quebec to Ontario
where kids were made to urinate in plastic bags rather than stopping.[Source]

I
have put all of this information together in hopes that it will help
anyone who is currently investigating this issue to find out more about
Lev Tahor, the rabbi and his family, issues with the police and
immigration authorities and the homeschool community.

It
is, very often, difficult to wade through the sea of information and
get to the heart of the issue, and it is my hope that this post will
enable you to do just that. Keep in mind that any articles posted in
Hebrew can be run through Google Translate. It is not the best, but you
will understand the basics of what is being said.

With
that being said, I will be keeping comments closed on this post in the
spirit of free information and to also keep individuals from being
attacked, spoken ill of or any other trolling.